Realization
by Lyndotia
Summary: Oneshot, canon-compliant. After Matsuda and Aizawa deliver the news of Light's death to his mother and sister, Sayu thinks of who he was and who he must now become.


A/N: This fic is a product of something terrible that happened tonight which reminded me that things are always more than meet the eye… and sometimes, those things impact your life more than you ever thought possible.

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**Realization**

_Light was Kira._

Those three words resounded inside Sayu's head as the epiphany washed over her. Matsuda and Aizawa hadn't said it, of course, but Sayu wasn't really as thoughtless as she sometimes led people to believe. She didn't put emphasis on her school because she could do fine in it without worrying too much – and if she didn't, Light would help her. Light was always the genius, the perfect child, the best at everything; so why did she have to try to live up to that when she could be happy just being who she was?

But that was all before, though. That was who Sayu had been once, a very long time ago. She couldn't remember what it felt like to be that happy and carefree anymore.

She couldn't remember what it felt like to _feel_ anymore.

_Light… was Kira._

It was the only explanation. Matsuda's fumbled explanation of a case gone bad made no sense. There was only one case Light worked on, and Kira didn't kill with bullets. But police officers who discovered a traitor amongst themselves did.

Their mother didn't seem to question the story. Then again, maybe she just didn't want to. She had lost their father; Sayu had closed out everyone after the kidnapping; and now Light was gone, too. It made sense, that she wouldn't question the story. That she wouldn't see the holes in Matsuda's story that were only too obvious to Sayu in her unfeeling evaluation.

_Light was Kira._

Sayu understood vaguely that this realization should shock her. It should horrify her. It should make her question her kidnapping and her father's death and everything she remembered about her brother. And it should hurt, maybe even more than everything she had been through already.

_Light was… Kira?_

For some reason, Sayu suddenly wanted to question what had been running through her mind. She didn't want Light to be Kira. She didn't want that to be the real reason he died.

She didn't _want_? But didn't that mean it made her feel something?

_Light was Kira._

The pity and poorly veiled anguish in Matsuda's eyes was enough to dispel those notions almost immediately. It was true, whether Sayu wanted to believe it or not. Her brother hadn't died on a case, fighting for justice and following in his father's footsteps. He had died because he was the one their father had died to bring down.

_Light… was… Kira…_

"Sayu?" Matsuda asked suddenly, and as she switched her gaze to him, she suddenly realized that everything was blurry. Her eyes weren't focused? How strange.

"Is she crying?" Aizawa asked uncertainly, his face another fuzzy shadow to one side of her vision.

"It will be okay, Sayu," added a third voice, and Sayu could hear the broken sorrow in her mother's tone, now. She didn't need to see Sachiko Yagami's face to know the grief and pain that would be portrayed there.

But there was something else in her voice, too – something that Sayu didn't understand, at first. Pride? No, that wasn't it. The pride of Souichiro and Sachiko Yagami had always been reserved for Light. Then perhaps… hope?

That was what it was, and there could be no mistake, but it made no sense to Sayu. What hope was left in a world where someone as good and just and perfect as Light could be Kira?

"Sayu?" Sachiko's voice repeated, and Sayu felt her mother's unsteady hand brushing a stray lock of hair back from her face. Probably to get a better look at her eyes, she guessed. "Sayu, are you listening?"

It was a surprise, the sensation as she felt the tear roll down her face. She had not cried, not felt, not really been a part of what was going on around her for so long that it felt foreign.

"Sayu," Sachiko whispered, "are you crying… for Light?"

All was silent, and Sayu suddenly felt the need to respond – the need to answer, the need to do _something_ to let her mother know that all was not lost. Even if Light – the perfect, the strong, the brilliant – was.

It was almost amazing, the strength of will that was required for even the simplest of movements, when one had so very little strength left. But this was important, Sayu knew; if Light was gone, she could no longer allow herself to be locked away. She had to be strong and good and brilliant and all the things that Light had been. Her head had barely inclined in the slightest of nods when Sachiko's arms closed around her in a tight embrace.

This wasn't a lie. Yes, Sayu was crying for Light. She was crying for all the things that he had been and could never be again. She was crying for the things he had done that were deplorable while fighting her hardest not to let them stain the image she still had of her perfect older brother. And she was crying because of the future he could have had that now would never be. And, she realized, the blankness of her mental isolation had been a luxury, a guard that she could no longer afford to keep up.

_Light was Kira!_

The words that had stirred her emotions in the first place now triggered a wave of pain that wrapped around her more tightly than even her mother's arms. And, as she fought to keep from falling back into the numbness she had just escaped, Sayu knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was not, and never would be, as strong as Light. For, whatever or whoever he had become, he would always be her older brother. And he would always be perfect.


End file.
